City of London Police Takes Cybercrime Fight to Businesses

The City of London police force has launched a new initiative designed to share threat intelligence and best practice advice on how to improve cyber-defense for the countless businesses in the Square Mile.

The Cyber Griffin community policing initiative has been developed to help both the business community and IT professionals.

Experts from the force’s Cyber Crime Unit will deliver threat briefings and updates to businesses and offer an environment in which executives can network with each other to share their experiences.

Officers will also deliver incident response exercises, in three different levels, from basic up to expert, played out in real-time in front of business leaders.

Finally, the initiative will set up advisory groups comprised of officers and experts from industry and the private sector to help provide threat intelligence and cybersecurity insight to members of the business community.

Cyber Griffin lead officer, sergeant Charlie Morrison, claimed that when it comes to online threats “the best offense is a good defense.”

“Although cyber-criminality challenges traditional policing as we know it, we are now more capable than ever to tackle the problem. However, it’s imperative we work with our local community to do this, especially in such a unique area as the City of London which is full of businesses who have the potential to be the target for a cyber-attack,” he said.

“Cyber-criminals specialize in looking for the weak spots in our security. Cyber Griffin therefore is about basics done well. Through briefings, incident response drills and expert guidance, the aim is to get the fundamentals right every time.”

Although the police will this time offer themselves up as an expert resource, there have been question marks raised in the past over low levels of in-house cyber-skills.

A report from Parliament Street in March claimed UK police had spent £1.3m on training over the past three years. However, the think tank argued that even this is just a drop in the ocean and needs to be backed by a nationwide police cyber-strategy as well as recruitment of more officers with existing IT skills.